User blog:Ace1580/The Problem of Pornography - 1
'Preface' This is the beginning of a project I've been working on for a while now. In anticipation of eventually giving a lesson on this topic at Kairos I wanted to get all of my ideas down and ordered so that I can have them for posterity, as well as having everything sorted for when I actually get the lesson, so a lot of this will be written as if I’m speaking to a group. Furthermore this is an excellent medium for peer-review. So without further ado... 'Introduction' 'Ground Rules' This is a series titled "The Problem of Pornography." Obviously this is a delicate subject, particularly for us as Christians who, historically, have stigmatized (probably to our own detriment) sex to the point where we don't tend to talk about it, even in a safe environment with the goal of growth and purity. Whether this is a bad place to be, or not, isn’t really a concern of mine, so much as the fact that we need to acknowledge where we are and be able to work from there. So I’m going to lay down some ground rules. I'm going to treat you like adults. I will not be using euphemisms through this series. When I want to communicate sex, I will say sex, when I want to communicate pornography, I will say pornography, when I want to communicate masturbation, I will say masturbation. The bottom line is, everyone here knows what sex is. We're flooded by it in our society, so I’m not going to dance around the terminology, I’m going to call it what it is That said, I’m going to try to treat this topic with some sensitivity. Not too long back I was reading "Every Young Man's Battle" and the book, while offering sound advice failed to use any degree of restraint in its presentation of what I was struggling with and in the end proved to be as much of a stumbling block as a help. Leading you into a stumbling block is the exact opposite of my goal here, so I’m going to try to find a balance that will hopefully treat the topic with almost a medical tactfulness: being frank and upfront and factual, but at the same careful not to put any fuel on the fire with being unnecessarily descriptive. The goal here is love, and freedom. 'The Purpose' So now that we've got that out of the way, why am I writing this? What's the purpose? Matthew 5:28 says "But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart." and Ephesians 5:3a says "But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality..." God's image for his people is one of holiness (that is, being set apart) in our sexual lives. We're going to cover this in depth in the first lesson, but as a Christian, it's clear to me that we have to have a devotion to purity and these issues need to be addressed in our lives. A big part of my desire to reach out to others comes from my own testimony, which I’ll go into a little more in detail later, but suffice for the moment to say that I struggled for a number of years with addiction to pornography and still have to constantly wrestle with keeping myself free from lust. When God delivered me and I began the process of making sure that I didn't undo the work he had completed, I reached out to other people. I began to share my testimony, I studied the topic, I read books, and I reached out to my friends and I found something. 95% of the young men (my peers) who I talked to about it admitted (often after hearing my testimony) that they struggled with pornography as well, and 100% struggled with lust daily anyways. I was shocked an astonished at these numbers. From this I would argue that pornography (and lust in general) is probably the single most widespread stumbling block experienced by young men (and by some young women too!) in the church today. Many of these guys had been Christians their whole life. I looked around at the kids in my youth group and I realized that even the most sheltered and pious of them would, if they hadn't already, be exposed to pornography and many of those would, just like me, fall into addiction. The fact that we stigmatize lust and pornography as somehow being worse than other sins doesn't help either. Rather than reaching out and seeking help, young Christians, convinced that they're alone and somehow dirty, and fearing reprisal from parents or authority, try to work it out themselves. This is far from the best way of going about it. More broadly, this message isn't just for young men. Plenty of young women struggle with the same problems, and even more broadly, many of the principles in this lesson will be applicable to someone stuggle with addiction of any kind: the truths still hold true regardless of the application. So that's why I’m going over this. I want to warn those who haven't yet been exposed to pornography of its dangers, help those who have been silently and singularly wresting with sin in their lives find freedom and let them know they aren't alone, those who have found freedom to honor the work God has done in their lives and stay free, and for the rest of us to do what we can to support those in the other three categories and lift our brothers and sisters up. Part 1.2 Category:Blog posts